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Less than 24 hours after the board agreed to allow open enrollment at Heath City Schools, a
parent sat in the district parking lot filling out applications.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what happens here,” Superintendent Tom Forman said
yesterday. “We’ve had several phone calls already this morning.”

Heath was one of the few districts in Licking County that didn’t open its doors to every student
in the state, Forman said. But facing a $1.3 million budget shortfall in 2013-14, the school board
decided on Monday night to give anyone the chance to apply and enroll tuition-free in the
district.

The success or failure of the new policy will help decide how much the district will ask voters
for when it places a tax levy on the November ballot.

“Really, we’re doing it for financial reasons,” Forman said. “We’ve been put in kind of a bind.”T
he district gets another $5,700 in state aid for each new student.

Ohio has allowed open enrollment at public schools for more than two decades. In Licking County,
only Granville and Southwest Licking schools don’t accept out-of-district students. In Franklin
County, only Columbus and Reynoldsburg schools do, the latter adopting the policy last year in the
face of budget cuts. Most Delaware County schools don’t allow it, either.

Statewide, nearly four out of five districts accept students who don’t live within district
boundaries, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

But Heath school board President Jim Roberts worries what the new policy might mean for the
quality of the district and the community. The lifelong Heath resident was the only member of five
who voted against open enrollment.

“It used to be that if you wanted your kids to go to Heath schools, you should live in Heath,”
Roberts said.

He noted, however, that enrollment is down in the district, which has an annual budget of $13
million. After building a new high school and renovating the elementary schools a decade ago, the
district projected the number of students to be at 1,850 today. Instead, enrollment hangs around
1,600.

The new policy caps the number of students at each of the four schools and doesn’t allow
classrooms of more than 25 at the elementary and middle schools and 30 at the high school.
Applications for enrollment are due onJune 1. A least two had been received by yesterday
morning.